So We Say

Some places are born into usWhen we come into the world
They have already shaped us
Laid foundations in our DNA

This map has always been there

Other places make their way onto usWe may choose these places
But we can’t choose how they stain us
Imprinting themselves
Sinking through our skin
Drop by drop
So that the music.
The accent
The food
Becomes a part of us

Permanently inked and carvedBecoming a part of the cells that make the cells

So even as we replace ourselves, shedding layers of old for new skinThese places remain

These maps float downTo meet the cartography of our DNA
To dance and chuckle together
To map out the particular world

That only we know

Body/s in Question is a multi-pronged research and performance project that charts chart the fault lines of race and identity that live in the multiracial body in the Caribbean and the U.S.A.

As I write, I’m driving through the countryside of Cuba, passing﻿ ﻿ fields of caña and palm trees and shaded mountains with coffee, through what were some of the first plantations in this “New” World that already very much existed before the ships arrived, but is also made new each day.

This is a return. Una vuelta.

I am halfway through my time here. I spent the first week on a program organized with PlazaCuba immersed in popular and folkloric dance traditions with some of the leading companies in Havana, including Ban Rarrá and Raizes Profundas. I am thankful that my experience in Cuba began with and through the body. In the turning and listening and following of salsa, rumba, and son. In the rhythms of the Orishas and the diversity and connection of traditions created in through the exchanges between Yoruba, Congo, Dahomey, Voudou as African, Spanish and later Haitians and Jamaicans found there way in this world of islands.

I am now beginning the second part of my journey, heading to Esmeralda, Camaguey, the town where my grandfather was born, as I explore migration and multiracial identity in the America’s via my family’s story in Jamaica, Cuba and the USA. I am carrying questions and wishes from the generations that came from this land but have never seen it and from my grandfather who left at 14 and carried Cuba in his heart, giving it to his children and grandchildren through his stories.

I continue to follow and weave the strings of ancestry, migration, racial identity and cultural heritage that have guided me thus far. I continue to dance because I have to. I continue to be caught by the arms of the universe in the form of friends who guide my next step.﻿

I am halfway through my trip and my head, heart, body and soul are full. I have no complete thoughts or thorough reflections so for now I offer some rough cuts from my time thus far.

-“No Woman No Cry” – Bob Marley

“Porridge is such a subjective thing.”

Subjective, certainly. This article, in “The Salt,” NPR’s Foodways blog suggests porridge is a traditional Scottish food eaten during cold winters. Multiple truths exist. For me, porridge is Jamaican breakfast. It has cousins as Brazilian São João street food (mingu,curau, canjica, and mungunzá) and Haitian late night snack (laboyi). I’m sure it is connected to Akamu, Ogi and Pap in Nigeria. It is grits in North Carolina. Perhaps it is polenta.

It has many names.

It is eaten in the constant year round heat that radiates from the equator.

But I don’t see these words in this article. So I will write them.

We must make the colonies visible.

Those far away islands that are at the heart of the identity, economy, and politics of those metropolitan British isles. Those places that seem to be easily ignored when talking about the roots of British and Scottishness. When talking about “changing the course of history.” When writing about how we came to be.

This article reminds me that I have a lot to learn about my history, personal and collective. About my ancestors before they came to Jamaica, Cuba and the United States, by will and by force. About Jamaican colonial and plantation society. About my African ancestry. About my Scottish and British ancestry. About Vikings. About the knots, contradictions and tensions that are my family tree. How love and violence, evil and good, power and oppression, wealth-building and poverty-making bumped up against each other to make us.

There is so much I do not know.

Porridge is tied up in slavery, growth, expansion, and capitalism. The British Isles and the Caribbean Sea are intimately related, in economy, identity, and genetics. For those on and descended from the Jamaican side of the relationship, it is impossible to make invisible the Scottish-ness, the Britishness, the Irish-ness of what we are. It’s in the skin, the food, the talk, the names. Sometimes, we choose to celebrate it. To simplify it. We do not have the choice of forgetting. We also don’t always have the choice of knowing.

When I think about Porridge I think about my Grandma, daughter of Lena Hall, from whom I get my middle name. I know that surnames in my Jamaican family – Hall, Robertson – have Scottish origins. I do not know how we got them, except for in vague terms that describe the violent and coercive ways that power, race, and gender collided in the colonies. I do not know the names that we lost, that we had before we were forced onto boats and crossed oceans.

I ask about my name. I learn that Hall is a name with origins to lands that border England and Scotland, and prior to that Norman Vikings. I ponder connections between my mother and my father’s family. My father’s family – Kibbe – is also potentially descended from Vikings that landed in England.

It’s in the porridge. It’s hot, and mushy, and mixed up.

Porridge references the class and identity divides amongst those in in both the metropolitan isles and the colonial islands. The type, consistency, and level of sweetness is code for wealth, status, prosperity and struggle – past and present.

I learn about identity constructed in contrast. About blurred lines of slave, free, white, black, ownership and immigration.

I ask about whiteness in Jamaica. I learn about the trade of Irish people as slaves.

I learn that a large number of Scotsmen (literally, male bodied people) voluntarily went to Jamaica, many as a way to increase their lot in life, and via their lives in the colony shed their marginal “Scottish” identity, replacing it with the more powerful “British”. By going “away” and into the contact zone of the colony plantations they built wealth and a new identity. Once color was constructed as the ultimate differential, these ancestors national difference from the British became relatively less important compared to my ancestors who were forcibly brought to the Caribbean island from Africa. Scotsmen were then able to re-enter metropolitan society as “British.”

I learn about spiritual forces that support us. About Brigid, the triple deity of fire, poetry, and inspiration. About Yemanja, the goddess of and mother of the ocean. About the meaning of corn, celebration of harvest, and how to celebrate and honor the earth.

I learn I have a lot more to learn. I learn to have more questions.

Porridge

Porridge is sweet and creamy
So sweet and hot
It fills me up
I am overheating from the inside out
So hot
It is too much

Each ingredients holds so much
Tells stories of trade of people, spices, sugar, rum
Lives and labor stolen, resources pillaged, people pushed to periphery
To create a metro center

Cream of wheat needs to have lumps The strawberry jam was never in a spiral in my bowl, like in the commercial My mother was not entertaining that kind of whimsy on weekday mornings

How do you eat porridge in the Caribbean?It is so hot!I’m overheating from the inside out

Sprinkle sugar on top Stir in milk to cool it down then butter It forms a glossy film on top. I don’t stir it in I like how it forms lakes and rivers

I can’t finish it,GrandmaI just can’t

It is the only thing I can’t finish I am a dumpling child Round and soft I love food I even love porridge But a whole bowl!? I can’t take it all in

It’s too much

It contains the story of sugar
Of cheap grains to feed forced laborers
Of food stretched too far

Eat the outside edges first It cools faster on the edges You won’t get burned that way

The richness of my porridge – the fresh milk, the butter – is a privilege
My grandma cannot comprehend my inability to finish
Like she cannot understand my identity crisis and anxiety about my light-white skin and how I fit into the world I live in
The Triangle,
of North Carolina,
circa 2003

The sugar is not a privilege Quick calories Paid for in blood and burns and bodies Eat eat Quick energy Eat eat Diabetes Eat eat To spend/to invest in expansion Of capitalist economies Built on colonial foreign lands and metropolitan factories Small islands fueling those slightly larger ones across the Atlantic

I do have questions about my ancestors
About their names.
Who came from Africa? From where?
Who came from Scotland? Why?
How did we get our names?
What names did we lose?

Porridge is creole Is transplant/immigrant/planter/owner/enslaved porridge is that-thing-we-do-now-that-we-don’t-remember-when-we-didn’t-do-so-perhaps-we’ve-done-it-forever porridge is pap is sweetness is the face of bitter

Porridge is grandma visiting I find her in the kitchen Stirring a hot pot for me my cousins my sister my brother

– – –

Ways with Foodis a place to stir up, marinate and serve up our questions, reflections and stories about food.

This post came out of me a bit unexpectedly. It is an invitation. I offer it to you to hold myself accountable to our vision of Broadly Speaking as space for authentic story telling, which requires that I regularly make myself vulnerable. And I offer it so that maybe you will also offer your story. Let’s show-and-tell a bit.

First a question,

How is person you want to be the child you have already been?

Like many, during the holiday season and New Year I reflect and look forward. My birthday is at the end of December, so around this time I have a very strong sense of the completion of a cycle and the beginning of the next one.

I have a number of rituals and methods to guide this season of reflecting and visioning. They happen in varied and haphazard ways, and sometimes include:

Naming my year – A few years ago my friends and I started naming our years, choosing themes we want to embody and live out over specific resolutions. We gather in person or virtually to share and help each other name our years.

Sometimes a beautiful friend holds space for a ceremony of release and embrace. (Thanks Laurel!)

Journaling and putting my visions into writing, naming what I want to see manifested.

Making a wish and blowing out my birthday candles

Ultimately, through all of these practices, I ask myself the question, “Who do I want to be?” I think about the ways I am being that person and the ways I want to get closer to it.

Usually, the focus is on being more than what I am – braver, bolder, more creative, more compassionate, etc.

This year, I unintentionally added a new element to my New Year ritual. While I was home in North Carolina I decided it was time to really deal with the massive amount of papers and stuff I have collected over my 25 years. I carry my family’s hoarding gene, so I have a hard time getting rid of things. And then suddenly I’ll decide I want to purge EVERYTHING in a fit of anxiety about my future life trapped beneath piles of papers and clothing that I don’t like/doesn’t fit but that might come back in style/has a lot of sentimental value/reminds me of that one time we were all together in that place/etc….

A mixture of that panic and a desire to dig into my personal archive propelled me to get organized. I let go of unnecessary papers and notes and carefully filed and organized the ones I want to keep. This meant I got to spend a good amount of time reviewing reports, notes, school projects, etc. from kindergarten through college and the present.

I want to offer this practice of digging into our childhood archive during times of visioning and intention setting because I found it incredibly helpful.

These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about where I come from (as this blog is evidence), and often I think of the forces that shape and make me as being external factors that such as my ancestors, my home town, my culture, my family. I also spend a good deal of timing thinking about who and how I want to be in the world. This can also manifest in a sense of what-I-am-not-yet.

During the past few years I have begun to think about “asset mapping” in relation to personal development and awareness. The term is a principle of community development and organizing. It means that all work in a community begins by naming and celebrating the resources – historical, spiritual, social, people, natural, economic, etc – that a community already has. I think it’s important, especially for those of us invested in community work, to remember to apply this tool in our personal lives.

My autobiographical archive dive helped me realize that the person I want to be in 2015, is really the person I was at 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 ….. (also probably 1, 2, and 3 but I honestly don’t remember her so I can’t say I know her – a concept I am very interesting in exploring more in another post…)

Around 13 was when things got a bit sticky. I started hearing a voice inside my head that told me I wasn’t good enough. And I listened to it.

Before that, I was AWESOME!

I created and made. In my end of year report, my 3rd grade teacher wrote, “Alison has amassed a substantial body of written work, one characterized by imagination and flights of fancy, but also a firm grasp on reality.” I want to hang out with that author! (And find that “body of work”….. do we think I could use it now as part of my artistic portfolio?)

I danced on the regular. I disappeared into the woods. I listened because I knew I had so much to learn. I trusted what I knew “for sure.”I didn’t hide from pain or hurt. I felt a LOT. Feelings were serious business. I understood their power and the need to *pause* and feel them fully. .

This year, I want to continue to remember that part of where I come from is the previous versions of myself who still live in me. Now, at 25, there are extra layers of baggage and blockage as well as wisdom, lessons and maturity gained. I don’t want to “revert” back nor offer an uncritical romanticization of my personal or our collective past (unfortunately, the South offers many examples of the dangers of doing that).

Part of collective and personal healing means acknowledging our demons and difficult histories. The past is not all butterflies, fairy homes, and sweet tea. But I also want to critique the idea of progress as always being forward motion and improvement always coming from the outside.

Simply, I want to remember that being my best me does always not require striving to be someone new. A big part of it means giving the child who I have already been the chance to come into the present with me. The child who’s waiting to come out and play.

As a practice of inviting this child into today, I will be a bit more like the younger Alison who would proudly say,

Here is a poem I wrote and I want to share it with you. And I would love if you shared with me. How could you as a child be a part of your life today?

5 and three quarters

I can do anything

I am a poet, a dancer, an author
I start writing novels
I create everyday
I write without fear
(or cares about spelling)

Moss is fascinating
Creeks are worlds to explore

I listen to folktales
I know they are important

I live in possibility
In power
In the constant unfolding of the world
And me unfolding and stretching with it

I say “Yes!” more than “No.”
I live in questions
I love the search for answers

I revel in attention from others – in conversation and performance
I feel it is deserved, because I am in fact, the most interesting thing I have ever encountered
I give my attention to ants and dogs and horses – real and imaginary

I put my foot down when I want to
And ask to be carried when I need to

I read and read and read and read
I get lost in books
I have no to do list
I read and read and read and read. And I love it. And I am praised for it.
I do it more

I sing.
In the shower, alone, with others
I imitate songs I know.
I make up my own
I sing even when it might bother others

I know I am good

Sometimes, I want to be a boy, and that is ok
I wear no shirts and have my hair cut short
The hairdresser sometimes buzzes the hair on my neck, the finishing touch to my bowl cut, and I feel so cool
Others confuse me for a boy
Some people are worried
I am not

I run and sweat and get dirty

I start to realize pain happens and I want to hold it for everyone
And I want someone to hold mine
I cry when I am sad
I cuddle with my parents
I trust they will protect me

They talk to me like I have something important to say

I imagine.

* Giving credit where credit is due, I want to shine some light on an awesome woman who helped me through this process. Through my work with Elizabeth Traina as a coach and at meditation I was able to access and process this inner child experience. Check her out!Elizabeth Traina is a working artist, award winning muralist, life-coach and energy healer. She has lived and contributed to programs in the San Francisco Bay Area, New Orleans and Brooklyn. Early in Elizabeth’s career she rooted in a civic-engaged public practice, utilizing art as a vehicle to support movements for social change. As an art-educator and community leader, Elizabeth’s curriculum and facilitation is grounded in the belief that all people are inherently creative – to be an artist is to discover, cultivate and share your unique gifts with yourself and others. This core-value is a cornerstone of her work; communicated throughout her community oriented public art projects, art workshops and trainings to hundreds of participants nation wide. In addition to her formal art training in New York, Vermont and Italy, over the past fifteen years, Elizabeth has worked closely with master healers, attended various workshop and trainings in the healing arts. This commitment to education and self-betterment has informed and seasoned her natural talents and integrated into her community based endeavors, current private healing practice and personal art making. In 2011 Elizabeth returned home to NYC and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY where she maintains an active studio practice, works as a consultant for Education community-based programs. In addition, Elizabeth engages private clients and groups an integrated life-coach and energy healer. www.elizabethtraina.com and www.elizabethtrainacoach.com

We are what we eat.
What we eat makes us who we are.
We make ourselves through what we eat.
The food we make, makes us.

Food is central to identity, both individual and collective. Psychic and political. Emotional and economic. That is why there is a field of inquiry dedicated to food, Foodways. It refers to the the cultural, social and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food. The field of intersections that spiral out from food.

Often we encounter the South through food (like this chef in the Bronx ). Southern food travels throughout the world as southerners migrate, and similarly Southern cuisine is born out of a contact zone of culinary heritages which has continued to transform with the influx of travelers and migrants who now call the South home.

Southern food carves out spaces in new geographies and new cuisines carve out space within Southern foodways.

The links between land, food, race, economics, politics, culture and identity are tightly woven in the South. We can’t talk about food in the south without talking about the political and economic implications of food and agriculture – the plantation and the slave trade, migrant labor and immigration policies – intimately linking the South to the Caribbean, West Africa, Europe and Latin America.

This is why I’m excited to build out a series dedicated to food. Ways with Food is a place to stir up, marinate and serve up our questions, reflections and stories about food.

When we cook, we nurture. We feed ourselves, our souls, our families, our communities, our histories. We re-member our ancestors. They come to us scents and tastes. Guide our hands as we stir. We travel to new places. We make ourselves full. We make ourselves whole.

Cooking is conjuring. It is transforming. Making something from nothing. It is alchemy. The transmutation of properties in complex spiritual and chemical reactions that serve to sustain life.

Cooking is time travel. It takes me back to the kitchen of my childhood. To the roots of where I come from. To places that bring me comfort and joy. To places I might never physically go.

Cooking is community. As I chop, my mother and grandmother’s hands guide me (as well as the various cooking show hosts I learned from on the Food Network during ages 8-16 years old). They join me in my New York apartment thousands of miles away from where they are. Their warmth fills the kitchen as the oven heats up.

Cooking is soothingly satisfying. It is tangible. Tasks are completed, ingredients combined, and something is made. We live in a time where I can work a full day without producing one physical thing. I need to get my hands into the elements. In water and fire. Feel heat and wet. Hot cold gooey sticky sharp rough. The motions put me at ease and always result in a tangible thing that I can touch, look at, share, and consume.

I’ve recently had a very strong desire to cook. An urge to get in the kitchen. I couldn’t really put a finger on what exactly I had such a strong desire to bake an apple pie. To make pumpkin bread from scratch. This was particularly curious because I was in the midst of a period of general lethargy and lack of motivation about everything else in my life. And then I of course decided that I “wasn’t allowed” to make an apple pie, because I “should” be doing all of these other “productive” – professional, artistic, etc – things.

It took me a while to recognize that I was craving healing. Healing through my own hands.

Ways with Foodis a place to stir up, marinate and serve up our questions, reflections and stories about food.

Here in NYC fall has officially come. It is no longer safe to leave the house without a legitimate jacket, multiple layers, and a scarf. Wind rushes off the Hudson and in response I hunch my shoulders up and brace myself. My southern-raised, Caribbean-bred body and soul do not take kindly to the cold (I somehow didn’t inherit that midwestern trait from my dad’s side). But despite my fear of the cold, I do honor and appreciate the changing of the seasons. So recognition of this time transition, here is a poem I wrote about my feet. My feet today and my feet in childhood and my feet in the future.

********

Come fall
summer feet
do not like to be bound
in thick socks
and boots.
They are used to
S P R E A D I N G out WIDE
on thick calluses
earned by
tromping
barefoot
on
gravel
and
hot
sand

Alison and family circa 1992. She’s the little blond lady in the sailor outfit with the very serious face.

I mean it had always been a thing, like…

*heavy pause/sigh*

… and I think, I’m sure some stuff happened at Friends School, but I remember more not there, like at horse back riding, when I was, this was still when I was in elementary school, like, my mom picking me up and someone being like, ” Are you adopted?” and me having to explain that, like, no I wasn’t.

And I think I’ve told you this, like, grocery story lanes were alway places where people would be like – and I don’t know – I actually don’t know how often it happened. It feels like it happened a lot, but I don’t know if it just happened some key times. But, people would ask if my mom was our nanny. And she would just say, “No. They are mine.” And then we would like pack up our groceries and go.

Ummmm, and like always like just like just standing next to her at like banks or something. Or like waiting for her to do some errand. And people would be talking to her like,

“Oh what do you need” whatever, and then look at me and be like

*high pitched voice reserved for talking with children* “Oh, what are you here for?” and I’m like “I’m with her.”

So I think it always was an issue.

– Alison, August 2014

“It has always been an issue.” My racial identity that is. Because I don’t “make sense” given how race has been constructed and functions in this world. In the United States. In the South. I am accustomed to the questioning of my identity in public. I consider it normal for someone to look at me, ask who I am or where I am from, and then act in disbelief, sometimes with a shocked and doubtful, “No you’re not!” when I tell them. This type of encounter happens regularly.

And in some ways it is understandable. As I said, I don’t “make sense.” More specifically, my body doesn’t make sense. I’ve recently taken to describing myself as a “light-to-white appearing” person. What I mean by that is I have blue eyes, blond hair (which was towhead, white-blond when I was younger) and skin that burns in the sun, turning more red than golden brown. What this outward appearance doesn’t often convey, is that I am a multi-racial woman of Afro-Caribbean heritage. My mother was born in Jamaica to afro-Jamaican and Cuban parents. Like Jamaica, my mother’s background is very mixed, but she is also obviously coded as black. We often refer to my mother’s family as the UN because it probably encompasses more people (my grandfather was one of 12) and more colors than most international diplomatic gatherings. My father is white, grew up in Ohio, and the Kibbe-clan is descended from Mayflower-era Puritans and Old English stock.

So, I understand that there is a bit of incongruence between my physical form and my cultural, racial, ethnic identity. I don’t automatically fault people for being surprised or confused.

But it does get tiring. I deal with this moment of “coming out” as multi-racial in a variety of ways, depending on my mood (shout out to this multi-racial sister who so eloquently talks about this process here). Sometimes I offer the full “Afterschool Special” version of my family history. On less generous days I respond with a simple “yes” when someone asks if my mother is really black, and leave the asker to figure out the rest.

But either way, it is something I have to deal with. And I am not complaining. I am IN LOVE with my history and identity. And I realize that I am lucky to be an “interjection” in our racial scaffolding. That introducing myself can be a doorway to unpacking racial constructs, misconceptions, and attitudes. That my body is in itself a complication of how we understand race and identity. And I also recognize that how I look means that I benefit from white privilege. I don’t pretend to understand the experience of going through this world with darker skin. I know that how I am read racially greatly impacts how I am treated and how I am allowed to navigate through the world. But I also have come to realize that despite the way I appear, my life experience is distinctly non-white. I do not go through the world not having to think about or be aware of race. And I also proudly claim the fullness of my culture and heritage.

But even though I understand where it comes from, this questioning and doubt still takes its toll. Having my identity and history constantly questioned has led to a certain sense of precariousness. Of fraudulence. For my entire life strangers have felt like they have a right to tell me who I am. To question my descriptions of myself. To assert their feelings, understanding, and sometimes bullshit and baggage, onto me and my body. To question where I belong. Because of this, I feel like I always need to be ready to explain myself. I live in “ready mode” with an explanation for who I am in my back pocket. And deeper in that pocket, a fear that perhaps I really am “not” the things I say I am. Because if others don’t see it in me, then perhaps it’s not true.

I heard this precariousness manifested throughout the interview.

A large part of my oral history interview was spent discussing race. I would say it took up a good 70% of the time. Which is fitting because I am usually thinking about it. I think the shaky ground that my racial identity sits upon, translates into how I see myself in other realms – professionally, romantically, geographically, astrologically. My “in-betweeness” feels very salient.

Some of the stories that came up are ones that are well rehearsed and recited – such as the story about my mother being asked if she was the nanny. Listening to myself tell these stories I tell about myself – these mini-monologues – linked together all at one time, I realized how much I work to make sense of myself.

To map myself.

Making sense of myself for myself, I make myself legible.

I translate myself by telling these stories over and over and over again.

At this point in my life I am particularly invested in making sense of myself, partly because I’m currently in community with many amazing black womyn artists. And starting with my mother, black women have always been my role models. I’m trying to figure out how I fit into it all, especially as I continue to grow up and into myself and my womanhood. How do I navigate the simultaneous reality of my blackness and my white privilege? And more specifically, how do me and my art work fit in? Will I always need to “explain myself”?

I am interested in healing this sense of precariousness, this feeling that who I am is always on shaky ground. There is no way to change how people respond to me. And given the history of skin tone and bodies, mine will always pose questions. But what I can do is dive deep into my experience and personal history so that I feel strong standing up and fully taking up my space. So I can trust my voice and speak, sing, and dance my truth. This oral history piece, this blog, the work I’m doing as an artist now – it is all about a deep dive into myself. About diving into the quick sand instead of trying to stand still in it or fight it with clompy steps.

“We know, in the case of the person, that whoever cannot tell himself the truth about his past is trapped in it, is immobilized in the prison of his undiscovered self. This is also true of nations… Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover’s war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.”
– James Baldwin, “The Creative Process”

“The personal is political”

“Dig into a dialect of your own design”
– Madlines the Lioness

“History cannot be held privately”
– Della Pollock, Remembering

“Now, anyone who has ever been compelled to think about it—anyone, for example, who has ever been in love—knows that the one face that one can never see is one’s own face. One’s lover—or one’s brother, or one’s enemy—sees the face you wear, and this face can elicit the most extraordinary reactions….the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be. The human effort is to bring these two realities into a relationship resembling reconciliation.”
– James Baldwin, “The Creative Process”

As Virginia and I discussed beginning “Broadly Speaking”, we began to wonder what might come out of doing oral histories with each other. We originally imagined it as a way to introduce ourselves to you, our readers. We also saw it as an opportunity to be reflexive. Oral history and ethnography are central to both of our professional and creative practices, but we are usually the interviewers. We felt it was important to understand that process from the interviewee perspective.

Participating in this process was incredible. It was unique because the two of us are very close friends and have been a part of each others lives for almost half of the time we have been alive. We have been essential to each other in our process of growing up and into ourselves. Interviewing and being interviewed by a close friend allowed our conversations to be open. The process also challenged us as interviewers and revealed new things about our relationship and ourselves. It heightened our sense of the distinction about what’s important to record. What conversations need to be captured? We were re-membering together – retelling stories that we both lived – but we were also learning new things about each other. Elements that shaped the other before we knew them, as well as things that we hadn’t known were happening, even though we were a part of each other’s lives at the time. What came out in the combined 4 hours of interviewing is a mosaic of the highly personal, the very analytic, the deeply insightful, and bouts of explosive laughter.

The process of re-listening to our own interviews and writing reflections was intense. Rarely do we have the opportunity to listen closely to ourselves. We had to relive and come to terms with not just our stories, but also the ways we tell those stories. And what that tells us about ourselves. We had a rare opportunity to see and listen to the “face” that we don’t often have to look at. In the process of attempting to answer our two straightforward questions – “What is important for readers to know about us?” and “What is it like to be interviewed?” – we had to dig into our personal nuances, complexities and shadows.

We decided to publish these in two parts, one reflecting on the experience of being interviewed and reflecting on short segments of our oral history interviews.

On Being Interviewed

There is something special about being interviewed.

Hearing myself tell my life story is eerily familiar and refreshingly strange.

There is a comfort in the stories – in knowing the endings and the feelings intimately. There is a newness in hearing my voice outside of myself. Outside of my body — coming into me instead of coming out of me. There is a discomfort in sitting in my past reality and letting it wash over me. Particularly the things I took care to fold, pack up, and walk away from.

I am trying to be generous with myself. There is a tendency to cheapen things in the past, especially from my youth. I want to pass it off with a preceding, “Well, I was 13…” or “It was one of those teenage things…” or simply a “whatever.” As if any of these qualifiers mean I don’t have to account for “it.” Deal with “it”. Acknowledge that at the time those emotions, experiences, people, fears were my full reality. I couldn’t dismiss them because they were all I had.

If I was listening to someone else, I would listen to their speech patterns and appreciate them without judgement as a part of the way that person expresses themselves. When listening to myself I am full of critique — why didn’t I finish that sentence, I mumbled here, etc. I am a performer after all, I want to be heard a certain way. But this is how I sound. I realized my mother is right, I do mumble. I don’t finish my sentences, numping from one thought to the next and daring my listener to follow.

Also, I say “you” when I’m really talking about myself. I give myself speeches, directing everything at “you” as if I am outside of myself.

I’m listening for poetry.

For monologues. For things to put in the choreo-poem I am writing. I’m listening to the oral history for parts to be used in the piece I’m creating.

I’m listening for poetry.

I was surprised at how “white” my voice sounds. I know that is a very problematic statement. And I’m not even sure what it means. But I couldn’t keep it from popping into my head. So even when people can’t see my blonde hair and light skin, hearing my voice probably cues them to think I am white, right? I have spent a lot of time thinking about how my body is seen racially, but not nearly as much time thinking about how I am heard and how that is coded.

Listening to this makes me want to do oral history with my mom.Will my kids or grandkids listen to this? I wish I could hear my ancestors re-tell their lives.

Part of me wants this essay to be a spitting out of who I am. A quick and dirty introduction to the “essential facts you need to know about Alison.”

Born in McAllen, Texas. Mother from Jamaica, raised in Jamaica, Queens, NYC. Father from outside Cleveland Ohio. Mother brown. Father white. Youngest of three. One older brother and one older sister. Raised in Carrboro, NC. Attended Montessori schools, Quaker school and a two-year stint in public middle school. Finished high school early to travel to Haiti. Went to Duke University for college (also went to UNC). Studied anthropology and public policy. Graduated 2012. Interned at the White House. Worked at the Kennedy Center. Was a barista and a waitress in DC. Move to San Francisco and NYC for an arts consulting fellowship. Landed in NYC. Working to be her full creative self as a freelance artists, arts administrator and teaching artist.

But in listening to my interview, I realize that a lot of the “juice” lies beyond the facts. And between the facts. And in the space created by the things I chose to tell, how I told them, and what I didn’t tell.

There is so much I chose not to say. And in hearing the absence of those parts, I realize that it is easy for everydayness to get lost in the retelling of memory. I remembered big events and ideas and I turn them into narratives and explanations. And then I dogear them in my mind, highlight them as “worthy” of retelling. In my oral history I heard these ideas and feeling analyzed and overlayed with broad strokes.

But those tiny details, the little dots — like how my mom yelled up the steps to me every morning. Or that brief period she made Pillsbury Flaky biscuits every morning. And the SlimFast shakes for snack phase. And the chinese dumping phase. (There were a lot food phases). Which seat was “mine” in our 1996 Honda Odyssey. Sitting and watching all of my sisters soccer practices. The couch in our living room. The fights over who would walk the dog.

These are the little everyday details that fill in those big lines. What really makes the tapestry and terrain of life.

I’m interested in this everdayness. Perhaps because it is often what we find so NOT interesting about our lives. Until we learn about someone else’s everydayness and how different it is from our own. This oral history is part of taking a deep dive into myself, and I realize this “deep dive” requires validating these everyday details just as much as the big picture. Acknowledging them as key shapers of my life and myself.

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